Boom Town (Doctor Who)

The only regret is for those of our friends who never returned." Epilogue The GIs and Modern America AT THE beginning of World War II my father, a small-town doctor in central Illinois, joined the navy. When he shipped out to the Pacific in 1943, my mother, brothers, and I moved to Whitewater, Wisconsin, to live with my grandmother. Consequently, I didn't see many GIs during the war. But in 1946, when Dad left the navy and set up a practice in Whitewater, we had what amounted to a squad of ex-GIs for neighbours. They lived in a boarding house while attending the local college on the GI Bill. Dad put up a basketball backboard and goal over our garage. The GIs taught me and my brothers to play the game. We were "shirts" and "skins." I don't know that I ever knew their last names-they were Bill and Harry, Joe and Stan, Fred and Ducky-but I've never forgotten their scars. Stan had three-on his arm, his shoulder, his hand. Fred and Ducky had two; the others had one. We didn't play all that often because these guys were taking eighteen or twenty one credits per semester. "Making up for lost time," they told us ...»